*shudder* Really wouldn't want to play any game that does any of that. As in neither "what is the point of playing if not the challenge" nor "adaptive approach to difficulty" nor "there must always be a chance that you can lose or fail the entire game". (As for being really stuck, there are usually guides when it comes to solutions or strategy, while for action the player should be able to lower the difficulty during gameplay as well if desired, but should be a manual setting, not the game doing it, whether you retry once or a thousand times. And game design should not allow blocking yourself into a corner where it becomes impossible and needs restarting (or going back a long way, if you keep such old saves around) due to character development choices or permanent missables (which also shouldn't exist in the first place).)

Yes, at some point this becomes the main gold sink, as the cost for resurrecting the companion quickly grows with its level.

I don't mind redoing the level and losing my progress. Some games even punish you by making the enemy that killed you stronger by giving them a level up f.e. I like that a lot.

As long as it's not done the soulslike way, where you 'circle' your way to your lost 'currency' à la 'Rollin''. That's just boring.

Incidentally, I like it when, in party based games, character death is easily reversible and often part of the strategy.

Final Fantasy 5 has an early MP trick where you can use one spell to restore MP at the cost of the caster's lifre, and then there's a revive spell you get early, but there's the slot and MP cost of using it. (Slot cost: Each character has only one slot for an ability other than the job command of their current job. Note that the two spells I mention are from different abilities, though both appear as job commands of some job.) (Also, note that Phoenix Downs are expensive in FF5, unlike in FF4, but at least they are buyable, unlike in FF3.)

In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, Rapturous Chant is probably my favorite ability. It heals the rest of the party (regardless of distance) at the cost of the caster's life, but the death doesn't result in an injury (the way normal deaths do). Add in a revive spell (on someone else), and you get a really nice healing strategy.

Hush, don't give EA any ideas. Not without compensation at least.

What part of "Slap Roberta Williams or the designer" didn't parse?

Whenever you play the game you are locked in your chair with a restraint, you die ingame you die irl.

There is no worse take on difficulty than some automatic lowering of it to me. I do think, the idea of "accessibility" in gaming spoils some joy because it deprives players of the joy they get from improving in a game.

Anyhow, I'm finally playing Sekiro now, so I guess we will see if I eat my words.

I hate games which keep a log of my failures in a patronizing way, and I especially hate it when they make it hard to reload normally. E.g. that pedo shit game, The Messenger, Ori 1. (Lost Vikings is funny instead of patronizing and I love it.)

I love games which acknowledge failure as part of the game, both instareloads like in Teslagrad and souls-like penalties. I love "hard" games that I can learn to play. Just let me practise and learn instead of being a dick.

Western RPGs have all turned into some miserable shit (except Planescape Torment's unofficial sequel Disco Elysium), I find that RPG mechanics are outdated and RPG-style stories are better served by other types of mechanics (and the modern stories are shit, too). Like, if I do prep work I get no surprises, and if I don't I get shit surprises. I do think rethinking death (knock outs unless there's a TPK or a plot-relevant reason for why party members can be rezzed) can help.

Oddeus's ideas are all great.

Well, the suspense could prove harmful to some players. It would be better to give the player an electric shock when he dies ingame. It starts weak, but the shock grows stronger on every death. BUT you don´t know how much stronger it will get. This way you can play a bit more relaxed without slacking off.

That's one of the things I love about Celeste. Respawns are instant, and the game even gives you an encouraging postcard that says "Be proud of your death counter! It shows you're learning!"

I don't like what's been referred to as "Souls-like"; it punishes the player too severely and doesn't make it easy to practice.

Same answer as always: It depends on the game. A rogue-like with multiple save slots and save everywhere function wouldn't be much of a rogue-like, and a game like Celeste with permadeath would be absolutely no fun to the great majority of players. It all comes down to genre and gameplay.

What I can say about my preferences in general is that if you're expected to die often, the game should make sure you're able to jump right back into the action, without having to click through a lot of screens or menus, without having to re-watch long animations or cutscenes and without having to endure long loading times, because that also kills the momentum and motivation, not just the player character.

Oh, and I don't like it when death feels pointless, like you start again with full life at more or less the same spot you were killed without losing anything (by that I don't mean like in Celeste or VVVVVV, I mean games where you have actual health bars and lives but losing any of it doesn't actually have significant consequences). But I don't like too harsh punishments for death either, and tedious repetition is one of the worst for me. So bad checkpoint placement or the Dark Souls mechanic are kind of a no-no for me, too. I want to be mildly disappointed in myself that I didn't manage to stay alive, with a little setback maybe, but without getting really frustrated and bored.

And permadeath actually is one of the reasons why I'm not that much into rogue-likes, among others, but I don't think the games would be better with a save and reload feature, that would just make them more pointless probably. And I do enjoy the occasional rogue-lite, also because of the threat of failure.

The distinguishing criteria, I think, would be how much time your runs take (fast-paced and short is better in my book), how enjoyable the gameplay is, how much variation and how many surprises there are in retries and how much potential to learn something new. If failure just makes me repeat what I did before and the major part of it is not a challenge (or frustratingly challenging due to mechanics I don't enjoy), or if it takes ages to get back to where I was before, I hate it. If I don't lose much time over it and can jump right back into trying to deal with the very the thing that killed me again, or if it turns into a different, whole new experience, or I'm having so much fun with the gameplay mechanics that I don't care, it's fine.

I kind of like the games that if you die you get some kind of punishment like in D3 you loose 10% durability to your equipment per death forcing you to repair your equipment much quicker. Or in Dragon Quest if you die you lose 1/2 of your gold. Or in Diablo 2 you lose gold on Normal Difficulty but in Nightmare Difficulty and beyond you lose gold and exp which makes grinding to 99 more difficult if you keep dying. I like games with check points/ 1/2 way points because if you are in a very long level and you die just after reaching the check point you don't have to start the that section again if you die. I don't like perma death because if you make a mistake you wish for one more chance but I respect players who can play in Hardcore modes like in Diablo 2 and 3.
No even better the game would write
You and Your Friends are dead
Game Over.
This comes from the Game Over Screen form Friday The 13th on Nes.
Or Game Over You suck form the Guitar Hero Episode of South Park.

Depends on the genre but whenever reasonably possible, saving should be in control of the player.

Bad/inconsistent save system is the number one thing that will make me stop playing a game.